mardi, août 30, 2005
Inertie et indépendance
Inertia and independence.
Whenever a scholar talks about home, you can almost see the whole table go nostalgic. Even when he's talking about his own hometown, in our minds we see our own. We see and hear old friends, taste our favorite foods from our favorite coffee shops and mamak stalls, feel our own beds, smell our own rooms.
When a scholar talks about home, he's not just talking about home; he's bringing us back.
I miss home. Every scholar misses home. When this scholarship is over, I'll finally be able to go home after more than eleven months away. I'll look for all my friends to hang out and catch up. Then I'm coming back to Singapore to work while I wait.
And hopefully I'll never have to go back home.
After living away from home, some people realize how much they actually love home. It might feel pretty lousy at times, but home's still the best.
The opposite happened to me.
There are many things I miss about home, of course. I miss my family, my friends, the food, the familiar sights and people I grew up around, the simple life I left behind. But that's about where it all ends. I might take that statement back a few years from now once I've seen some more. But right now, I won't. I can't stand the way my country is being run.
It's no secret that my politics are quite liberal. It's also no secret that I can get quite political myself. I see the conservative governance of my homeland as a travesty and an affront to everything I believe in. We're 48 years of age today, but we're still stuck in the past. Every Merdeka, we're reminded again and again that we have to be wary of the bloody white man and his bloody colonialist-imperialist intentions -- which happened to have disappeared so bloody many years ago.
This is not 1957. This is 2005. Times have changed. The world has changed. But, apparently, we haven't. We still need affirmative action, a revival of the New Economic Policy, we're told. We must fight globalization and protect our grossly inefficient national car industry with Approved Permits, we're told. We have to continue our counter-productive business practices like those that sank our now silent Bio-Valley, we're told. And, apparently, we have to randomly check your cellphone for pornography.
Just in case.
I love my country. But there's only so much I can take before I'm forced to look away. I can't make myself pretend that I can live in a place so stuck in conservatism, racism, and corruption. I can't pretend this is home.
Heh. I remember something Robert (my friend from Germany) told me while we were chatting about the London bombings and where the terrorists would strike next. "You're more European than you think."
Maybe that's where I belong then.
Happy Independence Day, Malaysia. Merdeka indeed.
Commentaires: 0
Whenever a scholar talks about home, you can almost see the whole table go nostalgic. Even when he's talking about his own hometown, in our minds we see our own. We see and hear old friends, taste our favorite foods from our favorite coffee shops and mamak stalls, feel our own beds, smell our own rooms.
When a scholar talks about home, he's not just talking about home; he's bringing us back.
I miss home. Every scholar misses home. When this scholarship is over, I'll finally be able to go home after more than eleven months away. I'll look for all my friends to hang out and catch up. Then I'm coming back to Singapore to work while I wait.
And hopefully I'll never have to go back home.
After living away from home, some people realize how much they actually love home. It might feel pretty lousy at times, but home's still the best.
The opposite happened to me.
There are many things I miss about home, of course. I miss my family, my friends, the food, the familiar sights and people I grew up around, the simple life I left behind. But that's about where it all ends. I might take that statement back a few years from now once I've seen some more. But right now, I won't. I can't stand the way my country is being run.
It's no secret that my politics are quite liberal. It's also no secret that I can get quite political myself. I see the conservative governance of my homeland as a travesty and an affront to everything I believe in. We're 48 years of age today, but we're still stuck in the past. Every Merdeka, we're reminded again and again that we have to be wary of the bloody white man and his bloody colonialist-imperialist intentions -- which happened to have disappeared so bloody many years ago.
This is not 1957. This is 2005. Times have changed. The world has changed. But, apparently, we haven't. We still need affirmative action, a revival of the New Economic Policy, we're told. We must fight globalization and protect our grossly inefficient national car industry with Approved Permits, we're told. We have to continue our counter-productive business practices like those that sank our now silent Bio-Valley, we're told. And, apparently, we have to randomly check your cellphone for pornography.
Just in case.
I love my country. But there's only so much I can take before I'm forced to look away. I can't make myself pretend that I can live in a place so stuck in conservatism, racism, and corruption. I can't pretend this is home.
Heh. I remember something Robert (my friend from Germany) told me while we were chatting about the London bombings and where the terrorists would strike next. "You're more European than you think."
Maybe that's where I belong then.
Happy Independence Day, Malaysia. Merdeka indeed.
Commentaires: 0
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